Residents kicking up a fresh stink over plans to increase landfill capacity

THEY have had to put up with the smell for half a century and thought light was finally at the end of the tunnel.

However, locals in Glasgow’s East End are kicking up a fresh stink about plans to increase capacity and delay the closing date of a controversial landfill site.

Communities in Mount Vernon, Broomhouse, and as far away as Newton Farm, in South Lanarkshire, have expressed their anger at proposals which would see Patersons of Greenoakhill extending the levels of waste from 48 metes to approximately 64m.

It comes as a result of the Scottish Government’s decision to push back a 2021 landfill ban to 2025 amid concern the target wasn’t achievable.

Patersons Waste Management, which runs the landfill near the M74, says the increase will only affect a small area of the existing site and has promised to listen to the concerns of the local area.

Lesley Pollock, chair of Mount Vernon Community Council, is among those to criticise the plans and says a survey of more than 1,100 people found residents overwhelmingly opposed the proposals. She said: “There are houses being built in the local area and this was because the site was closing.

People who were looking to buy are now not buying there.

“It isn’t just Mount Vernon but in the likes of Baillieston and on to Newton Farm. They’ve had terrible problems with it as well. There’s the smell, the health problems, the dust. It all causes problems for us. The smell is the worst. People are concerned about the exposure to the smells from the site and the damage it could cause to your health.

“We had more than 1,100 responses and they were outstandingly opposed to the plans. It is a substantial view held in the area.”

The landfill, one of Europe’s biggest, has proven irked locals since it opened in 1955 and has been beset by a number of controversies.

This has included legal challenges over the awarding of waste management contracts from South Lanarkshire Council and some damning reports from the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA), which regulates the site.

SEPA chiefs ranked the landfill as

“poor”, the second lowest ranking, in terms of compliance in each year from 2016 until 2018, the most recent report publicly available.

However, Patersons chiefs say many of these concerns have since been allayed and they point to transformative work on the site, including the creation of a woodland, as signs of progress.

Members of Broomhouse Community Council share the concerns of their Mount Vernon counterparts, arguing the local area has changed beyond recognition since Greenoakhill opened and is no longer the place for a landfill.

A spokeswoman added: “We have had concerns about the landfill for a number of years. We are in close proximity to it and we have had on and off dialogue over the years.

“It comes up regularly at our meetings in terms of the odour, the traffic, and the dust it brings. The saving grace was always ‘well, we only need to get to 2021, then it will all be okay’.

Glasgow City Council declined to comment but said it would consider the application in due course.